. . . Habitat Restoration Service and Corps “Work Hand in Glove” at Big Muddy Refuge — continued from page 9 corridor is also important to migratory birds, waterfowl, deer, turkey and, occasionally, mountain lions. Restored habitat enhances hiking, hunting and fishing, too. “There are opportunities to catch huge catfish,” says Bell. “Ninety-pound blue cats and 60-pound flatheads are out there. I’ve seen ’em.” It all starts with the Corps engineering chutes off the main channel. “It’s really gratifying to watch it happen, to see those side channels develop,” says Bell. “When they’re first created, they look like a ditch. But after a few highwater events, they look like a natural channel. They get all sinuous, and you see sandbars, and they’re beautiful.”
Twenty years ago, the Overton Bottoms North Unit of Big Muddy National Fish and Wildlife Refuge was row crop agriculture in the Missouri River floodplain. Now, it is early succession bottomland forest and wet prairie habitat. (Bill O’Brian/USFWS)
Plan Completed to Enhance Hunting, Fishing
Chief’s Corner
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Among the plan’s dozen action items are: • Creation of outdoor skills centers across the Refuge System, including at least one in each of the Service’s eight regions, to recruit new outdoor enthusiasts. • Continuance of established fish stocking programs on refuges and consideration of new stocking programs where possible and safe. • Emphasis on developing new or improved opportunities for hunting and fishing whenever refuge comprehensive conservation plans are updated. • Enhanced use of Web and social media to give refuge visitors easy access to information about recreation opportunities.
14 • Refuge Update
Additionally, the plan calls for the Service to review by year’s end the process for opening or expanding hunting and fishing on refuges. The 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation found that more than 90 million Americans 16 or older – 38 percent of the U.S. population – participated in outdoor recreation. Hunters and anglers spent about $90 billion in 2011 in pursuit of their sports. Completing the hunting and fishing strategy is not the end of Conserving the Future emphasis on outdoor recreation. A new Recommendation 18 team has been formed to write a strategic plan to help expand other appropriate outdoor recreation. The complete hunting and fishing strategy is at http://1.usa.gov/1g5geNS.
skilled and sophisticated techniques. Just this past winter the refuge’s staff released into the wild 22 juvenile cranes that had been hatched at New Orleans’ Audubon Nature Institute. No one is better at habitat restoration than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. We pioneered restoration work on national wildlife refuges. We now use those techniques in myriad programs throughout the Service. This Refuge Update showcases some of our habitat restoration work. I hope you enjoy learning about the steady progress our colleagues are making.